Martha Summerhayes

Vanished Arizona (Dodo Press) Martha Summerhayes

Martha Summerhayes (1844-1911), was a Nantucket, Massachusetts native who later on in life immigrated to Arizona. A well travelled and educated woman, Summerhayes spent two years, from 1871 to 1873, studying literature in Germany. Accommodations at Cooley's ranch were not up to the standards that Martha Summerhayes had grown used to, as a member of a rich family back in Massachusetts. She also found the fact that Cooley had two wives to be quite shocking, and she complained publicly about those two matters in particular. Her complaints were published in 1908 in an autobiography named Vanished Arizona. After her autobiography was published, Martha Summerhayes became a celebrity, receiving fan mail from hundreds of people, specially military men and students that valued her view of military life.